Who’s Middle Class?

The Atlantic ran a curious article last week. Under the headline “Why Americans All Believe They Are Middle Class”, Anat Shenker-Osorio argues that Americans are encouraged by politicians, the media, and even colloquial language to believe that they belong to the middle class, when in fact they do not. Shenker-Osorio observes:

The puzzle is why so many who do not fit the category (as median family income reported as just above $50,000 defines it) believe they do. Why does the description “middle-class nation” continue to feel appropriate, desirable, or both?

There’s not much of a puzzle here. According to a Pew poll that Shenker-Osorio cites in the piece, Americans don’t all think they’re middle class. On the contrary, they’re pretty good judges of where they belong in the class structure, at least as defined by the distribution of income.

In 2012, the poll showed 32 percent of American identifying as lower class or lower-middle class, 49 percent of Americans identifying as middle class, 15 percent of Americans identifying a upper-middle class, and 2 percent of Americans identifying as upper class. That correlates reasonably well with the 25 percent of American household with incomes of less than $25,000 a year, the 50 percent who earn between $25,000 and about $90,000 a year, the 20 percent who earn between $90,000 and $180,000, and the 5 percent who earn more than that.

The similarities are particularly striking when it comes to the top tier. The top 2 percent of American households have incomes of more than $450,000. That seems like a plausible cutoff for the 2 percent of Americans who call themselves “upper class”.

Regional variations are extremely important in understanding differences at the margins. Well-paid professionals are clustered in cities like New York and Washington. They tend to call themselves middle class or upper-middle class because taxes and high prices, especially for housing, constrain their standard of living. The reason is not that they’re trying to keep up with the Kardashians. In low-cost areas, on the other hand, it isn’t necessarily crazy to consider oneself middle class on a household income of, say, $30,000.

Moreover, class is about more than income. As the great sociologist Robert Nisbet observed, the concept of class developed to make sense of Victorian Britain. It referred partly to differences of wealth and economic activity: businessmen were middle class no matter how rich they were. But it also indicated different mores, speech, and even physical characteristics. When Britain imposed military conscription during the First World War, it discovered that working class recruits were significantly shorter than soldiers from the upper class.

Charles Murray and others have argued the United States is moving toward a similarly visible class system. But it’s still not easy to tell at glance (or a listen) to which class Americans belong. Most look and sound like they belong somewhere in the middle. That’s the historically consistent and still distinctively American phenomenon that the Pew poll reflects.

So it’s reasonable to see the U.S. as a middle-class society, even though far from all Americans identify as middle class. The question is whether it will remain one. The Pew numbers show the number of Americans who identify as middle class declining from 53 percent in 2008 to 49 percent in 2012. Far from indicating that Americans are victims of false consciousness, that figure suggests that the norms and expectations that defined American social reality in the 20th century are eroding fast.

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12 Responses to Who’s Middle Class?

I’ve long felt that the dividing line between middle class and upper class had to do more with – does that person have to work to maintain a high end lifestyle, and are they in a position where unexpected calamities (medical, investment, etc) could suddenly leave them dependent on others?

Even for some very high income people in America … mortgages, taxes, insurance costs, additional medical expenses, elderly parent care, college payments can quickly erode years of savings and if nothing else quickly clear out much or all of a retirement account. For many workers in their 50s, it’s pretty much a given that loss of their current position could instantly result in a 50% cut in income in whatever other job they might be able to find … if they can find a job that pays them at least 50% of their current wages and provides equivalent benefits.

Knowing that you’re one mishap away from needing to move out of the home where you raised your kids and downsize into a much smaller home or apartment, or from having to give up being able to fly across the country to see your grandkids a couple times a year … that doesn’t make someone feel particularly upper class, even if they have a relatively high income.

What has changed as much as downward income is the growth of income and status insecurity. Our economy has been destabilized and seems to be much more vulnerable to creative destruction.

Schumpeter, the economist of creative destruction, predicted that sooner or later the creatively destroyed are going to get really sick of the creative destroyers. I think that we are getting close to this point, politically. This is among the reasons that the Republicans are swimming upstream in national elections.

I believe we are headed towards a society where there is a small upper class, a smallish professional class and the rest will be in the struggling to get by to poor sector. Maybe we’re already there. I disagree about not being able to distinguish class by look or accent; in my upper middle class suburb it’s reasonably easy to determine by dress & manner of speech as to whether or not the person is a more well to do individual or not. The truly wealthy old money are different in temperament & attitude to the nouveaux riches and so on. I honed these skills when I lived in Philadelphia and interacted with every segment of society and before long I could determine if the person was from the Main Line vs Bucks county vs Fishtown or South Philly. The accents aren’t quite as varied now that I live in CA but language usage is still a good indicator in spite the ever present “dude”.

Max Weber was on to something when he treated class as a matter of consumption patterns rather than income or production. Leading up to the great recession, even families with a modest but stable income could finance a home and a car or two. On the weekends, they might even be able to go out to the back yard, grill hamburgers, and drink domestic light beer while the kids cool off in the above-ground pool. Meanwhile, in a neighborhood not a half a mile away, one might find a family which makes four times the income but has strikingly similar consumption patterns. Along with a bigger mortgage, their house has five bedrooms rather than three. Their backyard is landscaped and they grill steak rather than burgers. They drink imported beer while the kids dive into an in-ground pool.

There can be a huge gap in income between these two families, but the kinds of consumption patterns they share have far more in common with each other than with people on the extremes of the income spectrum. Having a mortgage is very different from either renting or owning several homes outright. A vehicle that gets you to and from work and to run errands is a convenience enjoyed by blue collar workers and white collar professionals alike, and it distinguishes them from those who must rely on public transportation on the one hand and those whose cars act much more as status markers than as practical necessities on the other.

The industry and technology of the twentieth century made it possible for many Americans to share these kinds of consumption patterns. In the lead up to the recession, housing policies positively encouraged such consumption patterns even among those with very modest incomes. It is little wonder, then, that so many Americans would have identified as middle class. It is also little wonder that so many fewer would place themselves in the middle class after the housing market collapsed.

Perhaps the best way to look at class is having to do with the security that ones personal wealth, family, and associations provide.

For example, consider the younger George W. Bush. Maybe he wasn’t truly wealthy in purely financial terms until he got his payoff from the consortium of the Texas Rangers owner partnership and Clear Channel’s Tom Hicks – but he was upper class in the sense that his family always had the financial resources and willingness to help him out of any jams, and he had the business connections to ensure that he would always fall upwards. Being the right class provides structural advantages that one really has to screw up in order to negate.

With our destabilized economy of booms and busts access to capital becomes key. Capital allows you to buy when everyone is selling and to sell when everyone is buying. This plays into the hands of the Buffetts and Soroses of the world and makes the rest of us their patsies.

A more subtle, but pervasive, cause of the growth of income disparity is the rise of two-income households. First, because those with two-incomes and few children have an advantage over other families. Second, because people tend to marry within their income group, a marriage of $100,000 earners nets $200,000 while a marriage of $30,000 earners nets only $60,000. This increases the disparity between the two groups.

The question Americans should be asking is who is the working class and who is the ruling class. This is the question raised by Occupy Wall Street. Even asking the question is subversive because it soon leads to the realization that non ruling class men and women, blacks and whites, old and young, straight and gay, democrat and republican, believers and non believers have more in common with each other than with the ruling class. This realization is the antidote to false consciousness. And it is the genesis of solidarity which is the natural advantage the working class has over the ruling class. United, we have the numbers. The faithful will note that solidarity is like training wheels for brotherhood.

The middle class then becomes visible as those who have favor with the ruling class. Engineers are more valuable than laborers for instance. Talented artisans and successful merchants may find favor with their rulers. Corporate climbers and masters of bureaucracy manage the working class on behalf of the ruling class. These are the true middle class. They are defined by their usefulness to their rulers.

For the sake of better understanding let us speak of class when we speak of class and income when we speak of income. In the same vein let us not confuse conservative with republican nor liberal with democrat. Even better, when we speak of demographics, lets remember that our differences are only recognizable in the context of our shared humanity.

The Wall Street Journal is running an interesting series this week on the life situation of the “typical” middle manager, a group which often feels pressure from those above and those below. One nugget of wisdom I gleaned was that the advance of technology in the workplace has helped to undercut the status of middle managers, while subjecting them to the potential of round-the-clock demands from their bosses.

The point that several commenters have made about security is an excellent and helpful one. Exposure to risk can be as important as income to class status.

But I stand by my claim that it’s not easy to determine Americans’ class at a glance. One can learn the subtle markers, as Mike has done (the literary critic Paul Fussell wrote a sharp and funny, if somewhat dated book about this). And class difference are more obvious in the Northeast and perhaps some parts of the South than they are in the Midwest or Sunbelt.

Even so, I find that most of the people I notice at, say, the airport look and sound pretty much the same.

The book and training from Bridges Out of Poverty http://www.bridgesoutofpoverty.com/
was especially helpful to me in thinking about the cultural mores and language of the poverty, middle, and wealth classes. Our hospice team used these resources, because we enter the homes of all classes, bringing the cultural rules and expectations of our own class with us, and they can spot the difference from down the street, literally. There are helpful quizzes: could you survive in the ____class? Questions like: I know how to sign my child up for soccer. I contract with a designer for my holiday decorations. I know how to use a knife as scissors. Makes class real.